A Marriage Proposal
by Ostercy
Summary: A 1000 word vinigrette based on fan speculation about "Origins" that I wrote for a mini-competition. I didn't win. I probably came last. So I still can't describe myself as "award winning". Curses!


**A marriage proposal**

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in pursuit of a lost fortune must be in want of a good handgun.

Unfortunately for me and my unwanted companion, sixteen-year-old Sherry Birkin of the Redwood City Birkins, the ship had gone down with all my materiel, and now we were stuck on some bloody island.

"Do you have to keep swearing like that?" said Sherry. "I thought you were a Lady?"

I quoted Swift at her; "_A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord_."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"We 'ladies' not only swear, we also read books," I said. "Now - do you possess any survival skills?"

Sherry pondered. "I can ride a horse and shoot a handgun," she said.

"That's wonderful." I said. "Good luck catching a horse. Now I reckon we're about a hundred miles north-noreast of Hokkaido which actually puts us off the coast of Russian Sakhalin Island."

"We're nowhere near Russia, Lady Croft."

"Lara, please. Wherever we are we need to find people."

Sherry didn't like the swamp much. I'd forge ahead only to find that she'd stopped still and was waiting for me to go back and get her, like some sort of idiotic subsiduary character in a survival horror game. In the time that it took me to coach her a hundred yards I'd managed to fashion a bow out of bamboo and twisted creepers.

"What's that for?" asked Sherry.

"Tigers," I said.

"There are tigers?"

"One can but hope. I'm feeling a bit peckish."

I must admit that the swamp was little sepulchral, but Sherry was apparently terrified, leaping up in the air at every squelch. At one point we had to leap from one rock to another. I gauged the exact distance and jumped. Sherry seemed to do it with her eyes shut and in slightly the wrong direction and ended up face first in the mud.

"I thought that if I got it roughly right I'd make it," she wailed as I fished her out.

I called a halt, and in order to keep the insects at bay lit up one of my precious cigars.

"You smoke? I thought you were some kind of athlete?" said Sherry, making the sort of face that she'd have made if I'd ordered a full fat latte.

"Anna Kournikova smokes like a chimney," I said, mildly. "So does Zinedine Zidane. Besides, I don't inhale. Now - do you want me to blow smoke at you or not?"

"It'll age my skin."

"Not as much as a faceful of mosquito bites... shhh!" I pulled her down. I had heard something.

Peering through the branches I caught sight of a shape, shuffling slowly in our direction. It was of intermediate height, the mop of hair obscuring it's face ringed by a halo of buzzing flies. It was either naked or dressed in some sort of grubby one-piece, and bundles of twigs dangled from its limp arms as it shambled along. It appeared to be trying to detect us, its hair covered face turning from side to side, snuffling.

Sherry totally freaked, as she might have put it. Snatching my improved archery kit from me before I could stop her, she took a professional stance and fired an arrow straight through the throat of the visitor. It staggered around gurgling for a few seconds and then crashed heavily into the ooze.

I ran to the vicitm. "You blithering idiot!" I said. "What did you do that for?"

"It was attacking us!"

"It? See the tattoo around the lips? It's a woman, a member of some primitive tribe of Ainu."

"What's an Ainu?"

"The Japanese equivalent of Aborigines. And you've killed one."

Sherry looked as if she was going to cry. "But it ... she looks like that from The Ring."

"Well doh!" I said. "Where do you think all these horror stereotypes come from? The Japanese south of here have spent generations ethnically cleansing these people and scaring their kids with ghost stories about them."

Before I could say another word, a group of Ainu came running up and grabbed us. A couple of them bent over the woman and began to weep. We were escorted back to their village and locked in a hut. After a while, one of the men came to talk to us.

"_Do you speak Japanese?_" he said in bad Japanese.

"_Like a Brit_," I said, nodding.

"_Your friend murdered the chief's wife whilst she was collecting firewood_."

"_Can't you hand us over to the authorities_?"

"_The chief is the authority_."

"_What is the penalty for murder_?"

The main drew himself up. "_We are civilised and do not believe in execution. We would merely cut off the nose and ears of the culprilt_."

"_I have a proposal_."

Some time later I returned. Sherry was sitting in a catalonic huddle on a mat in the corner.

"Listen carefully, " I said.

I had portrayed her as a high status woman and said that the killing was an accident. In compensation I had offered Sherry as a replacement wife.

""You have got to be fucking kidding!" exploded Sherry.

"Entirely up to you," I said, offering her some whisky from my hip flask. "Eye for an eye, and all that Biblical stuff."

"But I'm an American and she's a fucking ... savage."

I sighed. "I've swapped you for a motorboat and a compass, and I'll head for help. All you have to do is keep your knees together - pretend you're a virgin - and I'll be back with the US Airforce to bomb this place back into ... well it already is in the Stone Ages ... before you can say Dick Cheney."

"No way. I'm going with you. They can't treat me like this."

"Listen, lady. You waltzed in her and killed one of them. What did you expect? A welcoming committee? Now, what 's your choice? Marriage or mutilation?"

Reader, she married him.


End file.
